


it paints me and all my mistakes

by kesselrunners



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Consensual Underage Sex (offscreen), Junior Year #7: LVA @ PVD - Part I, M/M, Overdose (only for one scene), actual character development for kent parson!, im dead and i love kent parson, swoops shows up at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesselrunners/pseuds/kesselrunners
Summary: "He isn't afraid anymore."It takes Kent Parson nearly a decade to move on from Jack Zimmermann.





	

**Author's Note:**

> will i ever stop using hamilton lyrics as fic titles? no. anyways here have some kent parson emotions as further proof that i can't write anything except for character studies. what's a plot and how do you use it?
> 
> this was unbeta-ed because everything i write is. my only friend is grammarly. also i wrote it in like seven hours while alternating between crying and rooting for canada to beat the usa (which is working, woohoo) and i didnt take this seriously at all. this is the least formal writing ive ever done. my ap lit teacher is crying somewhere and he doesnt know why
> 
> these characters and the wonderful comic they are from belongs to ngozi ukazu, who is so, so good to us.

Kent Parson is 17 and he’s in love with a boy who doesn’t love him back. He tells Jack once when they’re curled up together after sex. They’re both on the drunker side of tipsy and they haven’t even cleaned up yet, they’re just holding each other, and Kent will probably have to be the one to get out of bed but he doesn’t really want to. So he maneuvers himself around to look down at Jack, who just kind of grumbles and buries his head deeper in Kent’s shoulder.   


“Zimms? You up?” he says, his voice soft and hesitant but still so loud in the darkness. Which kind of doesn’t make sense, but honestly whatever. He doesn’t have to explain his thoughts to himself.

“Mm?”

“...I love you.” And that’s not even close what Kent meant to say, what the fuck. Jack isn’t talking like, at all, not even making a noise and Kent is maybe possibly totally starting to panic because it’s definitely true but  _ Jack doesn’t exactly need to know that oh God he’s so fucked _ .

When Jack’s silence continues, Kent just gulps and untangles himself from the sheets and from Jack’s octopus limbs and goes to find a tissue or a towel or something else to do that’s maybe completely out of the entire country of Canada.

When he gets back, Jack is asleep for real, not just ignoring him. Kent slides back under the covers and decides, screw it, even if Jack hates him now he’s going to take one more night and so he holds his friend close and goes to sleep. Jack doesn’t acknowledge that it ever happened in the morning and Kent pretends likewise. He’s too afraid to find out whether Jack loves him too.

_X_

Kent Parson is 18 and he finds the boy he loves unresponsive on a bathroom floor at some stranger’s party that they crashed because it was the night before the draft so why the fuck not. There’s vomit on Jack’s shirt and a bottle of Xanax near his hand but the only thought on Kent’s mind is that Jack  _ isn’t breathing.  _ One hand shakily dials 911 and the other is on Jack’s neck but he can’t tell if there’s a pulse because his own is pounding hardhardhard in his ears and in his limbs and in his throat, where his heart has lodged itself.

And years later he still won’t remember calling the ambulance, he won’t remember the paramedics arriving, he doesn’t remember arriving at the hospital. It’s like Kent blinks and then he finds himself in a waiting room with a lady who’s in the middle of a story about her cats. He doesn’t find out until later that her name was Erica and she was a paramedic and that she was worried about him going into shock. (Some years down the road, when he’s got money and after he’s bought himself an apartment and adopted Kit and then bought his mother a house, he’ll send her enough money for a nice car. He attaches a post-it note with only  _ Thank you. _ written on it.)

When Bob and Alicia show up, they convince him to let the driver take him back to the hotel. Kent doesn’t sleep and his hands shake the entire draft and then he’s going to Las Vegas and somehow, he never makes it back to the hospital. He’s too afraid to find out if it was his fault.

_X_

Kent Parson is 20 and he just won his first Stanley Cup. He did it, he got the hattie, he scored the winning goal, he’s one of the best players in the league under 23 and it still isn’t enough. All he’s ever wanted, since he first met Jack, was to stand next to him, hoisting the Cup and smiling at each other and laughing because they finally did it. And yet. Jack is off at his parents’ house in Montréal coaching peewee and the only reason Kent even knows that is because sometimes Bob calls him.

Jack hasn’t spoken to him in two years. Kent is still hurting, still raw and wounded and bleeding. He hasn’t really become close to anyone on his team because he doesn’t want to. If anything like the Jack Thing happened again Kent would probably die, if he’s being honest with himself. So he doesn’t go out after games, he doesn’t go to team lunches or dinners or brunches or drinks or whatever unless one of the PR interns literally frog-marches him there. His teammates roll their eyes every time he says no, call him a conceited, bratty kid behind his back and he does not give two shits because Jack changed his number and because Kent isn’t complete without Jack which sounds so corny but it’s true. Kent kind of hates himself for it and he’s kind of starting to hate Jack for it too.

In a (probably misguided) attempt to fill the 6’0, hockey robot-shaped hole in his heart or whatever that expression is, Kent adopts a kitten that summer. She’s literally so ugly, like hairless, snaggletoothed, way too fat kind of ugly and she hates every single person in the entire world except Kent, which he identifies with on a spiritual level except for how he hates himself too. He names her Kit Purrson after himself, obviously, dresses her up in like a tiara and princess dresses and bows and stuff, jogs her around town in a stroller, and makes her an Instagram a little bit after the season starts. He doesn’t even have any social media except a Twitter he never uses because no one asks him about anything except hockey and he’s not the one who is arguably not human when hockey is concerned. But he still makes his ugly cat an Instagram and devotes every second of his free time to her. He has no regrets (in this case, anyways. He has  _ so many _ others).

The season starts and Jack still hasn’t reached out to him. Kent doesn’t ask Bob for Jack’s new number and email and Bob doesn’t offer it. He doesn’t actually talk to Bob about Jack at all. He’s too afraid to hear confirmation that Jack hates him.

_X_

Kent Parson is 21 years old and he just won his second (consecutive, thank you oh-so-much) Stanley Cup. Jack is off at college, which, why the hell? First of all, why would he go to college and second, why would he go to a college with such a bad hockey team instead of like, Minnesota or Boston or something (why didn’t he want to come to Vegas to play with Kent?)? He still hasn’t even tried to talk to Kent or tell him about the decision himself. Kent found out through fucking Sportscenter, for God’s sake.

If Kent is being really truly totally honestly, what got him through playoffs was a combination of determination to prove he wasn’t just a one-hit wonder, Kit, and like 400 gallons of coffee. That  _ might _ have impacted his decision-making process, because it’s his Cup day and he’s driving to Samwell, Massachusetts to see the boy who never loved him in the first place. 

He’s pulling up outside the address Bob gave him when he pressed and it’s a frat house? What the fuck? But then he sees Jack and he’s bringing him the Cup that should be  _ theirs _ and not _ his _ . And Jack is yelling at him and they’re fighting and Kent is saying all sorts of things that he doesn’t mean, that he’s never meant, but he’s angry and hurting and he doesn’t want Jack to get to have this charmed college experience while he has to go home to a nobody and nothing but a damned cat.

Two d-men (he thinks they’re d-men, they’re fuckin’ huge) force him out of the house and there’s a kid who Kent thinks might be the goalie (not that he’s been following Jack’s new team except he has) who says “sorry, man, you aren’t a main character in his story anymore” and what the fuck does that mean? He’s too afraid that it means that Jack doesn’t want him, doesn’t  _ need _ him like Kent still needs Jack.

_X_

Kent Parson is 24 years old and the captain of his team and he gets his heart broken like he’s 18 again. He hears Jack was being scouted and goes to Samwell to convince him to join the Aces, to play with Kent. Zimms and Kenny, like the good old days. Kent tries not to think about how they weren’t as golden as they are in his memory. 

He ends up accidentally crashing the biggest party he’s ever seen (and he lives in Vegas, the entire city is a party) and taking about one million selfies, even though he would honestly rather sign autographs. Kent sees Jack with a little blond kid, who couldn’t even be over 20 and looks frighteningly like him. It takes about three seconds for him to realize that Jack is into this kid and then something like jealousy or bitterness or hatred rears its head in his chest and Kent is  _ furious _ . 

When he ends up Jack’s room with Jack’s arms around him and the smell of Jack’s cologne that hasn’t changed and Jack’s lips against his just for a fleeting second, Kent misses Jack, misses  _ Zimms _ with everything he has in him. And then Jack is pushing him away and the thing in his chest is worse than ever before and before he can truly process everything he’s pushing past the blond kid in the hallway, who he kind of wants to let know that eavesdropping is fucked up but then again everything about that conservation was fucked up and also he’s too busy trying to keep it together long enough to hurt Jack one last time. Kent knows intellectually that he’s probably the one in the wrong here, but emotionally he’s too damned wrecked to really care much at all.

As Kent tries to leave, clenching his fist and fighting back tears (he hasn’t cried about Jack in a three years and he refuses to start now), he resolves to try to start over in Vegas, to prove to Jack that Kent doesn’t need him around to be happy, doesn’t even want him anymore. He’s too afraid that he just ruined everything more than it already was ruined to do anything else.

_X_

Kent Parson is 25 years old and he’s lacing up his skates, getting ready to face the boy he used to love (the boy he still loves) across the ice for the first time. He gave an interview earlier, about how this is just like any other game, but he was lying through his teeth. He had what Google reliably informed him was a panic attack last night, his body shuddering and his breath failing him and tears soaking whatever Kit had instead of fur, like fuzz or skin or something else he never actually bothered to figure out. 

_ hey if we win we cld make that in2 a pregame rit. panicking tgthr or something,  _ Swoops had texted him that morning when he finally managed to decode Kent’s cry typing.

_ Thx swoops, real helpful _ , he had replied.

Kent can hear the rest of the Aces quietly talking while getting geared up. Someone is playing Lady Gaga because Poker Face had unironically become their theme song after Swoops had found a really shitty YouTube edit set to it. Kent is trying to distract himself from the knowledge that Jack is in the visitors’ locker room right now and that Jack has been playing damn well this season. 

He’s watched hours and hours of tape, they all have, and no one knows Jack’s playing style better than he does (he’s decided on pretending that the kid who had taken over as Jack’s rightie doesn’t exist). Jack won’t have the same advantage because Kent’s own playing style has changed since entering the NHL. They can do this. If they win this, if he wins this, he can prove to the world that he can be one of the best hockey players in the league, whether playing against Jack or not. As he steps out onto the ice, he is determined to show the world, to show the boy he used to love that he doesn’t need Jack Zimmermann. Kent Parson is 25 years old and he’s not afraid anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> huge thanks to my fellow patrons, who are the reason i love this fandom as much as i do and to the update for finally inspiring me to publish something in this fandom (the other option was an untitled, unwritten fry guy/johnson crack fic that im still gonna write one day).
> 
> EDIT: shoutout to phil kessler for single handedly winning the world cup of hockey all by himself wow he deserves this shoutout and also the entire world
> 
> this is dedicated to caitlyn, jonela, and hannah for letting me ruin their lives by getting them into omgcp and for enabling me on instagram. and to jennah, for being the best of the best, the light of my life and my platonic soulmate even if she'll probably never see this
> 
> my tumblrs are [ahsohka](http://ahsohka.tumblr.com) and [jlzimmermannn](http://jlzimmermannn.tumblr.com). the latter of which is where you can catch me yelling about hockey and check, please!.


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